Fulfil Moscow’s demands, ‘otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army’, Russia’s foreign minister said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has given Ukraine an ultimatum: Fulfil Moscow’s demands — including surrendering Ukrainian territory that Russia now controls — or the Russian army will decide the fate of Ukraine.
Speaking a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin once again said he was open to peace talks — and which the United States has described as disingenuous — Lavrov told Kyiv that it should, for its “own good”, comply with Moscow’s wishes.
“Our proposals for the demilitarisation and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy,” state news agency TASS quoted Lavrov as saying late on Monday.
“The point is simple: Fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army,” Lavrov said.
Asked by TASS how long the conflict will last, Lavrov said: “The ball is in the regime’s court and Washington behind it.”
On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin again said Moscow was open to negotiations and blamed Kyiv and its Western backers for a lack of talks, comments which the US has dismissed as insincere.
As the war enters its 11th month and despite myriad battlefield setbacks for Moscow, Russian forces are engaged in fierce fighting in the east and south of Ukraine while Russia’s missile and drone attacks have devastated Ukraine’s civil infrastructure, leaving millions without power, heating and water.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday that the situation at the front in the Donbas region was “difficult and painful” and required all of the country’s “strength and concentration”. He said that as a result of Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, nearly nine million people were now without electricity. That figure amounts to about a quarter of Ukraine’s population.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also been killed in cities Russia razed to the ground, and thousands of troops on both sides have died.
Hosting leaders of former Soviet states in St Petersburg on Monday for a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States group, Putin made no direct reference to the war in Ukraine while saying threats to the security and stability of the Eurasian region were increasing.
“Unfortunately challenges and threats in this area, especially from the outside, are only growing each year,” he said.
Since the invasion in February, Ukraine has driven Russian forces from the north, defeated them on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv and forced Russian retreats in the east and south. But Moscow still controls swathes of eastern and southern land Putin claims to have annexed.
The United States House of Representatives voted on Friday to pass a $1.7 trillion spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown, scheduled to take effect at midnight in Washington DC (05:00 GMT on Saturday).
The spending bill survived a Republican-led motion to adjourn, passing 225 to 201 along party lines. One of the last major acts of the Democrat-led Congress, it now heads to the desk of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The US Senate had previously approved the measure on Thursday. The bill’s passage through both houses of Congress helps avert a shutdown that would have furloughed government workers and closed non-essential services.
Remember what Pelosi said about Obamacare: “You have to pass it to find out what’s in it.” This is exactly the same. Democrats waited til the last minute in a lame-duck Congress to dump a 4,000-page, $2 trillion bill into the lap of the American people. https://t.co/2RUI08VXbl
“The bipartisan funding bill advances key priorities for our country and caps off a year of historic bipartisan progress for the American people,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday, adding that he would sign the bill into law “as soon as it reaches my desk”.
The package includes a 10-percent increase in military spending, bringing the US military budget to $858bn, as well as $772.5 for various domestic programmes and $45bn in additional military, economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine and NATO allies.
Republican members of the House hammered the 4,155-page spending bill on Friday, with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California calling it a “monstrosity”.
McCarthy is set to become the House speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber next year, following a 2022 midterm election that tipped the majority in their favour.
He will replace the current speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who recently announced she would step down as the leader of the Democratic Party in the House.
“It was sad to hear the minority leader say that this legislation is the most shameful thing to be seen on the House floor in this Congress,” Pelosi said on Friday, hitting back at McCarthy’s comments. “I can’t help but wonder: Had he forgotten January 6th?”
House Republicans had hoped to delay a vote on the spending bill until they took control next year. Before Friday’s vote, some in the party voiced criticism that the bill would increase the national debt and aggravate inflation.
Some Republican lawmakers also expressed frustration at the $45bn price tag for another round of assistance to Ukraine, as the country continues to battle the Russian invasion.
While US support for Ukraine enjoys strong bipartisan support, McCarthy said that the Republican majority would not issue a “blank cheque” for Ukraine in the future.
Another California Republican, Mike Garcia, denounced his fellow House members for failing to be physically present at the day’s vote, as they had been for a visit from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier in the week.
“The fact that we, this week, had more members of Congress show up to listen to a speech by a president of a foreign nation than to vote on the annual operating budget for our entire nation is cold. We have to do better,” he said.
During his trip to the US, Zelenskyy said he was confident that US support would continue.
Attracting less scrutiny was a 10-percent boost to the country’s military spending, bringing the military budget to a record-breaking $858bn compared with $740bn last year. Spending on domestic programmes also saw a boost of about 6 percent.
Another $40bn was set aside for disaster relief programmes for communities across the country struggling to recover from drought, flooding, wildfire and other events.
The spending bill is expected to be the last sizable piece of legislation passed before the new Congress convenes in January. While the Republican Party is set to control the House, Democrats will maintain a slim majority in the Senate.
The split Congress is expected to end hopes that the Biden administration will be able to make progress on the more ambitious aspects of the Democratic Party’s agenda, such as immigration reform and gun control.
During the last two years, the Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress has been riven with divisions, as conservative-leaning members halted initiatives on issues like voting rights and climate change.
However, the party has successfully passed large bills making investments in infrastructure, the US technology sector and combatting climate change.
The unanimous vote awarded Till and his mother, both civil rights icons, the Congressional Gold Medal.
The United States House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager murdered in a racially-motivated attack in the 1950s, and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley.
The bill, which passed the Senate in January, is meant to honour Till and his mother – who had insisted on an open-coffin funeral to demonstrate the brutality of her son’s killing – with the highest civilian honour that Congress awards.
The medal will be given to the National Museum of African American History where it will be displayed near the coffin Till was buried in.
Till was abducted, tortured and killed in 1955 after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman at a grocery store in rural Mississippi, a violation of the South’s racist social codes at the time.
Four days later, he was rousted from bed at his great-uncle’s home in the predawn hours and abducted. His killing galvanised the US civil rights movement after Till’s mother insisted on the open coffin and Jet magazine published photos of his brutalised body.
The Senate bill was introduced by Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Richard Burr. The House version of the legislation is sponsored by Democratic Representative Bobby Rush, who also introduced a bill to issue a commemorative postage stamp in honour of Mamie Till-Mobley. She died in 2003.
“The courage and activism demonstrated by Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, in displaying to the world the brutality endured by her son helped awaken the nation’s conscience, forcing America to reckon with its failure to address racism and the glaring injustices that stem from such hatred,” Booker said in a statement after the bill passed the Senate.
Congress has been handing out the medals since 1776, with previous recipients including civil rights icons like Rosa Parks, the Little Rock Nine and Jackie Robinson. The designation comes months after President Joe Biden signed the first anti-lynching legislation, named after Till, into law.
Until March of this year, Congress had failed to pass such legislation nearly 200 times, beginning with a bill introduced in 1900 by North Carolina Representative George Henry White, the only Black member of Congress at the time.
A United States official has said President Joe Biden’s administration will soon announce a $1.8bn military aid package for Kyiv, which will for the first time include a Patriot missile battery and precision-guided bombs for Ukrainian fighter jets, amid reports the war-torn country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, may visit Washington, DC.
US officials described details of the aid package on condition of anonymity on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Media organisations citing unnamed sources also reported on Wednesday that Zelenskyy could travel to Washington, DC to meet Biden and visit the US Congress. Zelenskyy’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the trip and security concerns could yet force the Ukrainian leader to change his plans, a source told the Reuters news agency.
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier on Tuesday said in a letter that there would be a session of Congress on Wednesday night, which would have a “very special focus on democracy”, further heightening speculation the Ukrainian president would visit the US capital.
The $1.8bn aid package due to be announced by Biden, according to AP, signals an expansion in the kinds of advanced weaponry the US is sending Ukraine to bolster the country’s air defences against what has been an increasing barrage of Russian missile attacks.
The package, which is expected to be announced on Wednesday, according to the AP, will include about $1bn in weapons from Pentagon stocks and another $800m in funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which funds weapons, ammunition, training and other assistance, officials said.
The Biden administration’s decision to send the Patriot missile system comes despite Russian threats that delivery of such an advanced surface-to-air missile battery would be considered a provocative step and that the system – and any crews accompanying it – would be a legitimate target for Moscow’s military.
When the Patriot would arrive on the front lines in Ukraine is unknown and US forces must also train Ukrainians on how to use the high-tech system. That training could take several weeks and is expected to be undertaken at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany.
All US and Western allies’ training of Ukraine forces has taken place in European countries.
The expected announcement of the aid package comes as the US Congress is poised to approve another $44.9bn in assistance for Ukraine as part of a significant spending bill. That would ensure US support for Kyiv will continue next year and beyond, as Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January.
Some Republican politicians have expressed wariness about the amount of US assistance being channelled to Ukraine.
Also included in the soon-to-be-announced package will be an undisclosed number of Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits, or JDAMs, officials said.
The kits will be used to modify bombs by adding tail fins and precision navigation systems so that rather than being simply dropped from a fighter jet onto a target, they can be guided to the target on release.
US fighter and bomber aircraft use the JDAMs and the Pentagon has been working to modify them so they can be used by Ukraine’s air force.
Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have pressed Western leaders to provide more advanced weapons, particularly for air defence, and the Patriot would be the most advanced surface-to-air missile system the West has given Ukraine to help repel Russian aerial attacks.
Reluctance to supply hi-tech weaponry
Washington has been reluctant to give Ukraine US fighter jets and Moscow has warned the advanced aircraft would also be considered provocative.
Instead of providing Ukraine with aircraft, the Pentagon is helping Kyiv find innovative ways to upgrade its existing fleet with the latest capabilities available on US fighters.
The soon-to-be-announced aid package will also include an undisclosed number of rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, thousands of artillery and mortar rounds, trucks and HARM air-to-surface anti-radiation missiles.
According to officials, Kyiv’s urgent pleas and the devastating destruction of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including loss of electricity and heat during winter, ultimately overcame US reservations about supplying the Patriots.
French President Emmanuel Macron also said on Tuesday that France had delivered more air defence missile systems and other weapons to Ukraine and would send more early next year.
“In recent days, France has sent Ukraine more arms, rocket launchers, Crotale (air defence batteries), equipment beyond what we had already done,” Macron told France’s TF1 and LCI television.
“We are also working with the armed forces minister [Sebastien Lecornu] to be able to deliver useful arms and ammunition again in the first quarter [of 2023] so that the Ukrainians would be able to defend themselves against bombardments,” he said.
Future planned shipments include new Caesar mobile artillery units but Macron provided no precise figures.
The French president said the number “will depend” on the outcome of ongoing discussions with Denmark, which had ordered the Caesar guns from France and may agree to give at least some of them to Kyiv.
Since Russia’s invasion in February, France has sent Ukraine 18 Caesar units and a 155-mm howitzer mounted on a six-wheeled truck chassis, capable of firing shells at ranges of more than 40 km (25 miles).
Macron said he had two “red lines” when it came to arms deliveries: that it did not affect France’s ability to defend itself and did not make Paris a co-belligerent in the war.
The arms were to “enable Ukraine to defend itself” in the face of a relentless barrage of Russian missiles and drone attacks, he said.
Paris has also already delivered anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles as well as armoured personnel carriers.
The release was revealed on the same day the Taliban banned women from attending universities in Afghanistan.
The Taliban have released two Americans that had been in detention in Afghanistan, the state department said on Tuesday – the same day that the group faced condemnation for banning women at universities.
“This, we understand, to have been a goodwill gesture on the part of the Taliban. This was not part of any swap of prisoners or detainees. There was no money that exchanged hands,” state department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
The two Americans released had arrived in Qatar on Tuesday, The Washington Post reported, citing diplomats familiar with the matter.
The identities of the two nationals were not disclosed. Price said that confidentiality rules forbade him from offering more details on the two Americans.
Speaking at a daily press briefing, Price said Washington was continuing to raise with the Taliban the need to release any US nationals still held in Afghanistan, but declined to provide who they may be and how many people may be held there.
“We are in a position to welcome the release of two American nationals from detention in Afghanistan. We are providing these to US nationals with all appropriate assistance. They will soon be reunited with their loved ones,” Price said.
He pointed out “the irony of them granting us a goodwill gesture on a day where they undertake a gesture like this [banning girls from universities] to the Afghan people, it’s not lost on us,” he said. “But it is a question for the Taliban themselves regarding the timing of this.”
On Tuesday, Afghanistan’s Taliban-run higher education ministry said that female students would not be allowed access to the country’s universities until further notice.
The announcement came as the United Nations Security Council met in New York on Afghanistan. The United States and British UN envoys condemned the move during the council meeting.
“The Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all Afghans, especially the human rights and fundamental freedom of women and girls,” US Deputy UN Ambassador Robert Wood said.
“We have an interest in seeing Americans released from detention. That is a uniquely US interest. But beyond that, the categories that I spoke about earlier – human rights, safe passage, representative government, counterterrorism … We will continue to advocate for these interests,” Price said.
The US has repeatedly condemned the Taliban’s track record since the group swept back to power last year when President Joe Biden pulled out US troops, leading the two-decade-old Western-backed government to collapse.
The UN chief, speaking to reporters during his annual end-of-year press conference in New York on Monday, said the case in Germany was just one example of the threat posed by the extreme right-wing to democratic societies around the world.
“It has been demonstrated that the biggest threat of terrorism today in Western countries comes from the extreme right, neo-Nazis and white supremacy,” Guterres said.
“And I think we must be very clear and very firm in condemning every form of neo-Nazism, white supremacists, any form of anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred,” he said.
“This is clearly a threat, and we must fight that threat with enormous determination,” he added.
Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office arrested 25 suspects earlier this month when thousands of police conducted raids on 130 sites across 11 German federal states that targeted adherents of the so-called Reich Citizens (Reichsbuerger) movement.
Prosecutors said members of the movement were suspected of “having made concrete preparations to violently force their way into the German parliament with a small armed group”.
They added that the 22 arrested individuals were German citizens and were detained on suspicion of “membership in a terrorist organisation”, while three others allegedly supported the organisation, including a Russian citizen.
According to reports, the conspirators sought to form “homeland security companies” that would carry out arrests and executions after an overthrow of the German state.
“My recommendation to whoever owns any platform is to make sure that the freedom of expression, especially of journalists, is respected and that hate speech, neo‑Nazism, white supremacism, the other forms of extremism, do not find their way through those social platforms,” he said.
“I have no personal feelings in relation to who manages a platform. I’m very interested in about how the platform is managed.”
The change, outlined in a pair of internal memos released by the US justice department on Friday, is a major win for criminal justice reform advocates, who point out that the current sentencing regime has led to the disproportionate incarceration of Black Americans since the policy was adopted nearly 40 years ago.
Mandatory minimum sentences for crack-related offences are currently 18 times lengthier than those for powder cocaine. The justice department has supported eliminating that disparity and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working on legislation that would significantly reduce it.
In the memos, Garland instructs prosecutors to treat “crack cocaine defendants no differently than for defendants in powder cocaine cases” when they are charging defendants and making sentencing recommendations.
They also instruct prosecutors to reserve charges involving mandatory minimum sentences to situations in which there are certain aggravating factors, such as the leadership of an organised crime group.
Advocates welcomed the move but added that codifying the change into law was key.
“Today’s announcement recognises this injustice and takes steps to finally strike parity between powder and crack cocaine sentences when there are no pharmacological differences in the substances,” Democratic Senator Cory Booker, a sponsor of the legislation regarding cocaine sentencing, said in a statement.
The move comes as Senate negotiators close in on a deal to tuck a measure narrowing sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine into a year-end spending bill.
In 1986, Congress passed a law to establish mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking offences, which treated crack and powder cocaine offences using a 100-to-1 ratio. Under that formula, a person convicted for selling 5gm of crack cocaine was treated the same as someone who sold 500gm of powder cocaine. That proportion was narrowed to 18-to-1 in 2010.
The guidance from Garland goes into effect in 30 days. It does not apply retroactively.
Bill, unlikely to pass in the Senate, would offer Puerto Rico voters choice between statehood and forms of independence.
The United States House of Representatives has passed a bill to allow Puerto Rico to vote on a binding referendum on whether to become a state or gain independence – a largely symbolic measure unlikely to pass in the Senate.
The House passed the proposal, dubbed the Puerto Rico Status Act, in a 233-191 vote on Thursday. The proposal calls for a vote in November of next year to “resolve Puerto Rico’s political status”.
The measure would give Puerto Rican voters a chance to choose between independence, sovereignty in free association with the US or statehood. The referendum would not include Puerto Rico’s current status as a US commonwealth.
“Many of us are not in agreement about how that future should be, but we all accept that the decision should belong to the people of Puerto Rico,” said Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez, the island’s non-voting representative in the US Congress.
For the first time in our nation’s history, the U.S. recognized its role as a colonizing force. The Puerto Rico Status Act lays out a process for the Island to decide its own future. It doesn’t favor statehood, independence, or free association. It allows Puerto Ricans to choose. pic.twitter.com/fSgZymcpxU
But with the Congress, whose term expires early next month, heading to a recess, the proposed legislation has virtually no chance of being taken up by the Senate, let alone clearing the 60-vote threshold required for passing in the 100-member upper chamber.
On Friday, 16 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the bill.
“It is crucial to me that any proposal in Congress to decolonise Puerto Rico be informed and led by Puerto Ricans,” said Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees affairs in US territories.
Puerto Rico residents are US citizens but effectively have no representation in Congress and cannot vote in US general elections.
A former Spanish colony, the Caribbean island was acquired by the US in 1898 after the Spanish-American war. With more than three million people, it is the most populous of the US territories subjected to different treatment than the country’s 50 states.
For example, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Puerto Ricans were not entitled to the same federal welfare benefits as citizens living in the states.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Friday that it was “a long and torturous path” to get the proposal to the floor.
“For far too long, the people of Puerto Rico have been excluded from the full promise of American democracy and self-determination that our nation has always championed,” Hoyer said.
Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, hailed the bill as a “watershed moment” that would allow the island to decide its own future.
“While Puerto Rico is not the United States’s only colony, it is its oldest,” Ocasio-Cortez said before the vote.
“Today for the first time in our nation’s history, the United States will acknowledge its role as a colonising force and Puerto Rico’s status as an extended colony.”
Key Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who voted against the bill, said while she supports statehood for the island “if that is what the people of Puerto Rico decide to pursue”, she opposed the bill because it would allow independence.
“The United States should bring the over three million American citizens in Puerto Rico closer, rather than pushing them further away,” Stefanik said in a statement.
“This last minute bill was brought to the floor by Nancy Pelosi without a committee hearing on the text. A proposal as complicated and impactful as statehood requires a thorough review and debate.”
In 2020, Puerto Rican voters narrowly favoured statehood in a non-binding referendum that did not include independence.
The US central bank projected interest rates rising to 5.1 percent in 2023, higher than what investors expected.
The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday and projected at least an additional 0.75 percent of increases in borrowing costs by the end of 2023 as well as a rise in unemployment and a near stalling of economic growth.
The United States central bank’s projection of the target federal funds rate rising to 5.1 percent in 2023 is slightly higher than investors expected heading into this week’s two-day policy meeting and appeared biased if anything to move higher.
Only two of 19 Fed officials saw the benchmark overnight interest rate staying below 5 percent next year, a signal they still feel the need to lean into their battle against inflation that has been running at 40-year highs.
“The [Federal Open Market] Committee is highly attentive to inflation risks … Ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time,” the Fed said in a statement nearly identical to the one it issued at its November meeting.
The new statement, approved unanimously, was released after a meeting at which officials scaled back from the three-quarters-of-a-percentage-point rate increases that were delivered at the last four gatherings. The Fed’s policy rate, which began the year at the near-zero level, is now in a target range of 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, the highest since late 2007.
The new rate outlook, a rough estimate of where officials feel they can pause their current rate-hike cycle, was issued along with economic projections showing an extended battle with inflation still to come, and with near recessionary conditions developing over the year.
Inflation, based on the Fed’s preferred measure, is seen remaining above the central bank’s 2 percent target at least until the end of 2025, and will still be above 3 percent by the end of next year.
The median projected unemployment rate is seen rising to 4.6 percent over the next year from the current 3.7 percent, an increase that exceeds the level historically associated with a recession.
Gross domestic product is seen growing by just 0.5 percent next year, the same as estimated for 2022, before rising to 1.6 percent in 2024 and 1.8 percent in 2025, a level considered to be the economy’s long-run potential.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, has been arrested in The Bahamas after being criminally charged by prosecutors in the United States.
The 30-year-old was taken into custody in the Caribbean nation after US prosecutors notified them they had filed charges and planned to seek his extradition, the Office of the Attorney General of the Bahamas said in a statement on Monday.
The US has not elaborated on the nature of the charges.
FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US last month.
Here is a history of FTX since it was set up in 2019:
2019
May: Former Wall Street trader Sam Bankman-Fried and ex-Google employee Gary Wang found FTX, the owner and operator of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.COM.
2021
July: FTX concludes a $900m funding round, which values the exchange at $18bn.
September: FTX signs a sponsorship deal with the Mercedes Formula 1 team.
October: FTX raises capital at a valuation of $25bn from investors, including Singapore’s Temasek and Tiger Global.
2022
January 27: FTX’s US arm puts its valuation at $8bn after raising $400m in its first funding round from investors, including SoftBank Group and Temasek.
Sam Bankman-Fried founded the crypto exchange FTX in 2019 and went on to raise billions from prominent investors [File: Saul Loeb/AFP]
January 31: FTX raises $400m from investors, including SoftBank, at a valuation of $32bn.
June 4: FTX signs for naming rights for the home arena of basketball’s Miami Heat in a deal reportedly worth $135m.
July 1: FTX signs a deal with an option to buy embattled crypto lender BlockFi for as much as $240m.
July 22: FTX offers a partial bailout of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital. Voyager calls it a “low-ball bid”.
August 19: A US bank regulator orders FTX to halt “false and misleading” claims it has made about whether funds at the company are insured by the government.
November 2: Crypto news website CoinDesk reports a leaked balance sheet that shows Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading firm, was heavily dependent on FTX’s native token, FTT. The Reuters news agency was unable to verify the report.
November 6: Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao says his firm plans to liquidate its holdings of FTT due to unspecified “recent revelations”.
November 7: Bankman-Fried says “FTX is fine. Assets are fine”.
November 8: Binance says it is planning a deal to acquire FTX.
November 10: FTX suspends onboarding of new clients as well as withdrawals until further notice. Bankman-Fried tells staff in a memo that he is scrambling to raise funds and has held talks with Justin Sun, founder of the crypto token Tron.
FTX is thought to have paid $135m for naming rights at the home arena of the Miami Heat [File: Jim Rassol/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters]
November 12: Reuters reports at least $1bn of customer funds have vanished from FTX. The exchange says it has detected unauthorised transactions. Blockchain analytics firms estimate outflows between $473m and $659m in “suspicious circumstances”.
November 13: Bahamas securities regulators launch a probe over the collapse of FTX, which has its base in the Caribbean nation.
November 15: Financial regulators in the Bahamas appoint liquidators to run FTX’s unit in the country.
November 16: FTX outlines a “severe liquidity crisis” in US bankruptcy filings, which show the group could have more than 1 million creditors.
A court filing shows FTX’s Bahamas unit, FTX Digital Markets, is seeking protection from creditors in the US under Chapter 15 of the US Bankruptcy Code.
Bankman-Fried is sued in a US court by investors alleging the company’s yield-bearing crypto accounts violated Florida law.
Liquidators for FTX Digital Markets “reject the validity” of FTX’s US bankruptcy proceedings.
Major crypto player Genesis Global Capital suspends customer redemptions in its lending business, citing the sudden failure of FTX.
November 17: The US House Financial Services Committee says it plans to hold a hearing in December to investigate the collapse of FTX.
November 30: Bankman-Fried says in an interview at the New York Times Dealbook Summit that “he didn’t ever try to commit fraud”.
December 12:Police arrest Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas, with the US expected to file for his extradition. US authorities decline to comment on potential charges, but the New York Times reports the charges include wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering.
Pioneering Black-American feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a community activist who toured the United States speaking with Gloria Steinem in the 1970s and who appears with her in one of the most iconic photos of the second-wave feminist movement, has died. She was 84.
Hughes, also a child welfare advocate, died on December 1 in Tampa, Florida, at the home of her daughter, Delethia Ridley Malmsten, who said the cause was old age.
Hughes and Steinem, a journalist and political activist, forged a powerful speaking partnership in the early 1970s, touring the country at a time when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class. Steinem credited Hughes with helping her become comfortable speaking in public.
In one of the most famous images of the era, taken in October 1971, the two raised their right arms in the Black Power salute. The photo is now on display in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
Born Dorothy Jean Ridley on October 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia, Hughes became an activist at an early age, according to a family obituary.
She organised the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden childcare services in the city. She also established a community centre on Manhattan’s West Side, offering daycare, job training, advocacy training and more to many families.
By the 1960s she had become involved in the civil rights movement and other causes, working with Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and others.
In the late 1960s, she set up the West 80th Street Childcare Center, providing daycare and also support for parents. It was there that she met Steinem, who was writing a story about the centre. They went on to become friends and speaking partners, addressing gender and race issues at college campuses, community centres and other venues across the country.
In the early 1970s, Hughes also helped found, with Steinem, the Women’s Action Alliance, a broad network of feminist activists aiming to coordinate resources and push for equality on a national level.
By the 1980s, Hughes had moved to Harlem and opened Harlem Office Supply, the rare stationery store at the time that was run by a Black woman. But she was forced to sell the store when a Staples opened nearby, part of President Bill Clinton’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone programme.
She would remember some of her experiences in her 2000 book, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! Whose Inner City Is This Anyway!: One Woman’s Struggle Against Sexism, Classism, Racism, Gentrification, and the Empowerment Zone.
In Ms Magazine, Laura L Lovett, whose biography of Hughes, With Her Fist Raised, came out last year, said the activist “defined herself as a feminist, but rooted her feminism in her experience and in more fundamental needs for safety, food, shelter and child care”.
She is survived by three daughters: Malmsten, Patrice Quinn and Angela Hughes.
The US sanctions freeze assests including those of Guinea’s former President Conde and Mali’s former President Keita’s son.
The United States has imposed sanctions on more than 40 people and entities for alleged rights abuses from nine countries, including Guinea’s former President Alpha Conde and Karim Keita, son of former Malian leader Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Karim Keita.
In a statement released on Friday, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said the announcement was the outcome of a thorough and multiyear investigation.
Conde, who was deposed in a coup in September 2021, was sanctioned for his “connection to serious human rights abuses”.
In 2010, Conde became Guinea’s first democratically elected leader and was re-elected for a controversial third term after a constitutional referendum 10 years later. His presidency was bogged by allegations of endemic corruption and serial human rights abuses.
In May, Guinea’s attorney general ordered legal proceedings against Conde and 26 of his former officials for alleged crimes, including acts of violence while in office. The charges range from complicity in murder and assault to destruction of property.
According to the statement released by the US Embassy in Guinea, Conde’s security forces engaged in violence against opposition supporters and “the government arbitrarily arrested and detained opposition members” in 2020.
Meanwhile, Keita served as the president of the Security and Defense Commission of the National Assembly in Mali from February 2014 until his father was overthrown in an August 2020 coup. He used his position to receive bribes, embezzle government funds and remove other officials who did not support his actions, the US said.
Keita was also allegedly involved in the abduction, torture, and murder of reporter Birama Toure who was investigating his involvement in corruption.
“Corrupt actors and human rights abusers both rely on deficiencies in the international financial system to perpetrate their activities,” Brian Nelson, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in another statement on Friday.
“Over the past year, the Treasury has made combatting corruption and serious human rights abuse a top priority, including through the use of financial sanctions and addressing vulnerabilities in the US and international financial systems. By exposing the egregious behavior of these actors, we can help disrupt their activities, dismantle their networks, and starve them of resources,” he added.
The announced sanctions freeze any US assets of the affected persons and bar US citizens from dealing with them.
Individuals and entities from North Korea, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iran, Philippines, Russia, the Tibetan autonomous region of China, and elsewhere were also included in the sanctions list.
Jones faces nearly $1.5bn in court-ordered judgements for spreading lies about 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has filed for bankruptcy, after courts in the United States ordered the Infowars host to pay nearly $1.5bn for spreading lies about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections at a court in Houston, Texas, on Friday. The filing states that Jones has $1bn to $10bn in liabilities and $1m to $10m in assets.
For years, Jones claimed that the 2012 killing of 20 students and six staff at Sandy Hook was a hoax, and that many of the victims were “actors” employed by the government.
Jones has sinced acknowledged that the shooting was “100 percent real“, but the victims’ grieving relatives said they were harassed and threatened for years, even receiving deaths threats, from people who believed the lies spread by Jones.
In October, a Connecticut jury awarded families that had taken Jones to court $965m in compensatory damages, following weeks of anguished testimony by loved ones of those killed who said that their lives were overturned by Jones’s lies.
“Every single one of these families [was] drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them,” the lawyer representing the families told jurors.
Earlier in the year, a jury in Texas had also awarded the families $49m, and in November, a judge ordered Jones to pay an additional $473m to the families, bringing the total to nearly $1.5bn.
The bankruptcy filing by Jones has temporarily halted proceedings in the Connecticut case, and has pushed a judge to cancel a hearing that was to be held on Friday morning.
The hearing would have dealt with the Sandy Hook families’ request to attach the assets of Jones and his company to secure money for the damages, The Associated Press news agency reported.
Jones has claimed that he is unable to pay the penalties, and the extent of his personal wealth is not clear. However, an economist in the Texas case estimated Jones’s personal worth at between $135m and $270m.
Jones’s company, Free Speech Systems, also filed for bankruptcy in July.
Connecticut judge Barbara Bellis temporarily blocked Jones from moving any personal assets overseas after the plaintiffs claimed that Jones was trying to hide assets to avoid paying.
“Like every other cowardly move Alex Jones has made, this bankruptcy will not work,” Chris Mattei, a lawyer representing Sandy Hook families, said on Friday. “The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury’s verdict.”
A lawyer for Jones did not immediately return a request for comment from the Reuters news agency.
Bankruptcy can be used to wipe out debts, but not if they result from “willful or malicious injury” caused by the debtor. Jones’s lies appear to meet that standard, said Susan Block-Lieb, a professor of bankruptcy law at Fordham University School of Law.
“Defamation is pretty clearly an intentional tort – it is especially clear in Alex Jones’s case,’ Block-Lieb told the Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile, Jones continues to host his show. On Thursday, Jones hosted Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who made a number of anti-Semitic remarks and praised Hitler.
But an amendment to ensure paid sick leave for railroad workers failed to pass the US Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
The United States Senate has passed a bill forcing railroad unions to accept a deal that would increase wages to avoid a nationwide strike that was anticipated to have devastating economic effects.
The legislation was approved on Thursday by a vote of 80 to 15 and it now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature. Railroad workers were expected to begin their strike on December 9 if a deal was not reached.
The deal is based on a previous, tentative agreement hashed out in September with the help of the Biden administration that includes higher pay but no paid sick leave.
Shortly before the vote, the Senate rejected a separate amendment that would have given railroad workers seven days of paid sick leave per year, a key demand.
With a vote of 52 to 43, the amendment received majority support, with six Republican legislators joining Democrats to vote yes. But that tally fell short of the 60 votes necessary to overcome a filibuster during Thursday’s proceedings.
Pro-labour groups have criticised Congress’s intervention as an attack on the rights of workers to collectively bargain and a concession to railroad companies that have refused to budge on the issue of sick leave.
The administration has defended the move by pointing to the cost a railroad strike would have on the economy at a time of high inflation. A strike could roil the US supply chain and affect up to 30 percent of the country’s shipments by weight. In a speech on Thursday, Biden warned this could result in 750,000 jobs lost and a recession.
Several unions had already approved the tentative agreement, which the Biden administration helped broker and hailed as a “big win” in September.
The deal offered railroad workers a 24-percent pay increase and a $5,000 bonus over five years and comes at a time when railroad companies have slashed their workforce by more than 30 percent over the last six years. During the same period, railroad companies engaged in stock buybacks and seen their profits rise.
All 12 unions involved in the negotiations needed to approve the contract to avoid a strike. The majority did so, but members of the nation’s largest railroad union cited unmet quality-of-life issues, including demanding schedules, among their reasons for rejecting it.
Congress can resolve disputes between railroads and unions as part of its power to regulate commerce. Some legislators, such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, pushed to include paid sick leave in Thursday’s legislation.
“If you are a supporter of the working class, how are you going to vote against a proposal which provides paid sick leave to workers who have none right now?” Sanders said in an interview pushing for the rejected sick-leave amendment earlier this week.
Democrats in the House of Representatives, one of the two branches of the United States Congress, have selected New York’s Hakeem Jeffries to lead their caucus.
His appointment, following a unanimous vote on Wednesday, was historic. Never before has a Black politician been named a party leader in the US Congress.
Jeffries is set to lead a Democratic party that will lose its majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since 2018. In a speech following the vote on Wednesday, Jeffries said the party would reach across the aisle to work with Republicans.
But he added that Democrats would “push back against extremism whenever necessary”.
So who is Jeffries, and what does his ascension mean for the future of the Democratic Party? Let’s take a look at who he succeeds and the role he has played in Congress so far.
Humbled to be elected incoming House Democratic Leader.
Jeffries will be replacing California Representative and current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as head of the Democratic caucus. She was the first woman in US history to hold the role.
Pelosi – who represents California’s 12th district in the San Francisco Bay Area – has served as leader of the House Democrats for nearly 20 years. During her tenure, she has become one of the country’s most powerful political figures, building a reputation as a skilled leader capable of holding her caucus together during important votes.
Pelosi announced she would step aside as party leader on November 17 along with two other top House Democrats, Maryland’s Steny Hoyer and South Carolina’s Jim Clyburn. All three are in their 80s.
Their departure ushers in a younger generation of Democratic leadership, including the 52-year-old Jeffries. He is joined by 59-year-old Massachusetts Representative Katherine Clark and 43-year-old California Representative Pete Aguilar as whip and chairman of the caucus, respectively.
Jeffries thanked Pelosi in his speech on Wednesday, calling her an “extraordinary Speaker for the ages who has delivered so much for so many over such a significant period of time”.
“Our caucus is better. Our country is better. The world is better because of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s incredible leadership,” he said.
Presenting a unified front
Jeffries is a self-described progressive. In a letter asking his colleagues to support his bid for House Leader, Jeffries emphasised his commitment to issues like racial justice, gun violence and reproductive rights.
Andy Eichar, communications director for Jeffries’s office, told Al Jazeera over email that Jeffries has worked across the aisle to champion criminal justice reform and that he would protect healthcare from “right-wing attacks”.
However, Jeffries has staked out a more conservative position in the debate about the Democratic Party’s future and is expected to use his position to beat back challenges from the party’s more progressive left flank.
In an interview with The Atlantic, for example, Jeffries said he would never “bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism”. He was also a vocal supporter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she ran in the 2016 Democratic primary against Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
Pushing for a unified front on Wednesday, Jeffries acknowledged that conversations in his party can get “noisy”.
But, he said, “as we showed time and time again on issue after issue after issue, at the end of the day we always come together.”
Support for Israel
In his new role, Jeffries is also expected to bring continuity to areas such as the US relationship with Israel.
In a statement released in February, for example, Jeffries pushed back against a report by rights group Amnesty International, which accused Israel of carrying out the crime of apartheid against Palestinians.
The statement called the report’s accusations “demonstrably false, dangerous and designed to isolate Israel in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world”.
According to the group Open Secrets, which tracks campaign contributions, Jeffries also counted pro-Israel advocacy groups such as AIPAC among his top supporters. AIPAC has also endorsed dozens of Republican candidates who attempted to roll back or discredit the results of the 2020 election.
In a statement to Al Jazeera, Iman Abid, an advocacy director for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said Jeffries “has repeatedly shown that he supports the Israeli apartheid regime” and called on US voters to pressure lawmakers like Jeffries to stop enabling the “oppression of the Palestinian people”.
Looking ahead to the 2024 elections
Jeffries also faces the challenge of rallying Democrats to regain their majority in the House of Representatives in 2024.
Democrats gained control of the White House and majorities in both branches of the US Congress in 2020. But Republicans won a majority of seats in the House during the recent midterm elections, with new members set to be sworn in on January 3.
Democrats, however, were able to maintain a slim majority in the Senate. In his November letter, Jeffries called winning back the House majority “our top non-governmental priority”.
Jeffries will square off against Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, a representative from California who has positioned himself as a steadfast ally of former President Donald Trump. McCarthy will become House Speaker when the new Republican-majority House convenes in January.
Though he will take the reins of a party in the minority, Jeffries struck a confident note at a press conference on Wednesday, promising to “get stuff done”.
“We’re going to fight hard,” said Jeffries. “Each and every day we have this honour to serve in Congress and deliver.”
Canada PM’s visit to James Smith Cree Nation comes after leaders called for resources to set up tribal policing and addiction services.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is visiting an Indigenous community still grappling with the aftermath of a fatal stabbing spree in September that marked one of the deadliest incidents in Canada’s history.
Trudeau will travel to James Smith Cree Nation on Monday, his office said, to pay his respects to the victims of the September 4, 2022 rampage in the community, located in the central province of Saskatchewan.
The prime minister will meet with James Smith Cree Nation Chief Wally Burns and other Indigenous leaders, before making an announcement on Monday afternoon.
Burns had called for greater resources in the aftermath of the attack, including the establishment of tribal police in the community.
Ten residents of James Smith Cree Nation, home to approximately 1,900 people who live on the reserve, were killed in the series of fatal stabbings. Another person was killed in the nearby village of Weldon, while 18 others were injured.
Canadian police said last month that they believed only one of the two brothers initially accused of being responsible for the attacks carried out the murders.
Saskatchewan Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said Damien Sanderson, initially named as a suspect in the attacks, “was a victim of homicide” by his brother, Myles Sanderson.
After a days-long search following the stabbings, Myles Sanderson was arrested and died after going into “medical distress” in police custody.
Authorities have not released a motive for the attacks and the RCMP said last month that “the reality is, we may never really know exactly why”.
Some community members and Indigenous leaders have said the violence was the result of drug abuse.
“This is the destruction we face when harmful illegal drugs invade our communities,” Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) said in September.
Burns, the James Smith Cree Nation chief, also had called for the launch of addiction awareness programmes and for treatment centres to be established in the community.
“We’ve got to protect our community, fight against drugs and alcohol,” he said days after the spree.
Canadian media outlets had reported that Myles Sanderson had a two-decade-long criminal record and many of his crimes were carried out when he was intoxicated.
Meanwhile, two public inquests into the attacks will be held in Saskatchewan.
“The events that occurred require a methodical and complete investigation,” Clive Weighill of the Saskatchewan Coroners Service told reporters on September 21.
Alphonso Davies gave Canada a second-minute lead but Croatia’s quality shone through to put them top of Group F.
Croatia overcame a spirited Canada on Sunday evening to register an impressive 4-1 victory, sending themselves top of Group F and eliminating their North American rivals from the World Cup.
Canada took a rapid lead in the second minute through the scintillating Alphonso Davies, but Croatia’s quality told as the Khalifa International Stadium encounter developed with the Adriatic nation drawing level courtesy of Andrej Kramaric in the 36th minute.
Marko Livaja made it 2-1 shortly before half-time with a low-driven effort from the edge of the box, before Kramaric added a third in the 70th minute.
Lovro Majer made it 4-1 at the death via a breakaway counter-attack as Canada continued to press for a consolation goal.
US Federal Communications Commission decision targets devices from Huawei, ZTE and other manufacturers.
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced it is banning telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from prominent Chinese brands, including Huawei and ZTE, citing an “unacceptable risk to national security”.
The five-member FCC said on Friday that it had voted unanimously to adopt new rules that will block the importation or sale of the targeted products.
“Our unanimous decision represents the first time in the FCC’s history that we have voted to prohibit the authorization of communications and electronic equipment based on national security considerations,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a statement on Friday.
He added that the move had “broad, bipartisan backing” among US congressional leadership.
Security officials in the United States have warned that equipment from Chinese brands such as Huawei could be used to interfere with fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks and collect sensitive information.
The ban is the latest move in a years-long push “to keep US networks secure” by identifying and prohibiting devices deemed to be security threats, the FCC said.
Friday’s initiative also includes a ban on Hytera Communications, the Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company and the Dahua Technology Company.
Huawei declined to comment to the Reuters news agency. ZTE, Dahua, Hikvision and Hytera did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But in 2019, then-US President Donald Trump signed into law the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, which established criteria to identify communications services that Washington deemed could pose a risk to national security.
The services that were designated threats under that law were then subject to the Secure Equipment Act of 2021, signed by President Joe Biden.
That act created the groundwork for Friday’s announcement. It directed the FCC to “adopt rules clarifying that it will no longer review or issue new equipment licenses” to those companies.
At the time, Florida Senator Marco Rubio hailed Biden’s decision.
“The Chinese Communist Party will stop at nothing to exploit our laws and undermine our national security,” he said in a statement. “This legislation fixes a dangerous loophole in our law, curtailing their efforts to worm their way into our telecommunications networks.”
One of the largest manufacturers of telecommunications equipment in the world, Huawei has had an embattled relationship with the US and its allies, facing some of the heaviest sanctions ever placed on a single company in the US.
Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was detained for nearly three years in Canada, following allegations by the US Justice Department that she attempted to violate sanctions by trying to conduct business dealings with Iran.
She was indicted on bank and wire fraud charges and faced US extradition proceedings in Canadian court, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Canada, the US and China. Meng was released and returned to China in 2021.
Another FCC commissioner, Geoffrey Starks, described Friday’s ban as a preventative measure that would pay dividends in the future.
“By stopping equipment identified as a threat to the United States from entering our markets, we significantly decrease the risk that it can be used against us,” Starks said in a statement. “We also lower the possibility that we’ll need to rip and replace that equipment in the future. Ultimately, if it can’t get authorized, it can’t be deployed.”
Many on the far right and some on the left rejected the symbolic move to declare Moscow as a terrorist regime.
The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring Russia a state “sponsor of terrorism” over its war in Ukraine.
“The deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes,” the European Parliament said.
In total, 494 members of the European Parliament (MEPS) voted in favour of the resolution, 58 were against and 44 abstained.
The largely symbolic move is unlikely to make an impact, because the European Union – unlike the United States – does not have the legal framework to designate countries. Across the Atlantic, on the US list are North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Iran.
The EU established its terror list in 2001, following the September 11 attacks in New York.
It includes people, groups and entities and is reviewed at least every six months.
ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda armed groups are among those currently on the list.
Which members voted against the resolution?
Russia is the first country to be declared a state sponsor of terrorism by the European Parliament.
However, members were not unanimous in their voting, with a larger proportion of the right-wing bloc of the Parliament against the association of Russia with terrorism.
Twenty-six members of the far-right political group Identity and Democracy voted against designating Russia as a sponsor of terrorism.
Here is a breakdown of votes by country, home country party, and member:
These French politicians who voted against the resolution are all members of the National Rally or Rassemblement National, which is led by Marine Le Pen.
Mathilde Androuët
Jordan Bardella
Aurélia Beigneux
Dominique Bilde
Annika Bruna
Patricia Chagnon
Marie Dauchy
Jean-Paul Garraud
Catherine Griset
Jean-François Jalkh
France Jamet
Virginie Joron
Jean-Lin Lacapelle
Gilles Lebreton
Thierry Mariani
Philippe Olivier
André Rougé
The following German politicians who voted against the resolution are all members of the far-right Alternative for Germany or Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD).
Christine Anderson
Gunnar Beck
Nicolaus Fest
Maximilian Krah
Joachim Kuhs
Guido Reil
Bernhard Zimniok
Czech MEPs, who are members of the populist Freedom and Direct Democracy party, or Svoboda a přímá demokracie:
One member of the centre-right European Conservatives and Reformist Group voted against the resolution:
Emmanouil Fragkos, whose party in Greece is Greek Solution, or Elliniki Lusi-Greek Solution
Twelve members from the centre-left Progressive Alliance of the Socialists and Democrats voted against the resolution.
From Bulgaria – all with the centre-left Bulgarian Socialist Party:
Ivo Hristov
Tsvetelina Penkova
Sergei Stanishev
Petar Vitanov
Elena Yoncheva
From Germany – all with the Social Democratic Party of Germany or Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), which is the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz:
Joachim Schuster
Dietmar Köster
From Italy – these three politicians belong to Partito Democratico or the Democratic Party:
Pietro Bartolo
Andrea Cozzolino
Massimiliano Smeriglio
From Slovakia:
Monika Beňová (SMER-Sociálna demokracia, or Direction – Slovak Social Democracy)
Robert Hajšel (Independent)
Ten members of the Left group in the European Parliament voted against the resolution:
From Belgium:
Marc Botenga (Parti du Travail de Belgique or Workers’ Party of Belgium – which is a Marxist party)
From Cyprus:
Niyazi Kizilyürek (Progressive Party of Working People – Left – New Forces)
From Czech Republic:
Kateřina Konečná (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy, or Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia)
From Germany (DIE LINKE. party, or The Left party):
Özlem Demirel
Martin Schirdewan
From Portugal (Partido Comunista Português, or Portuguese Communist Party – a Marxist-Leninist group)
Sandra Pereira
João Pimenta Lopes
From Ireland (Independents 4 Change):
From Spain:
Miguel Urbán Crespo (Anticapitalistas)
Nine MEPs who are not affiliated with any political grouping also voted against the resolution:
Nicolas Bay (France – Reconquête!, or Reconquest – a nationalist party)
Francesca Donato (Italy – now an independent but formerly with the far-right Lega Nord, or Northern league headed by Matteo Salvini)
Marcel De Graaff (Netherlands – Forum voor Democratie, or Forum for Democracy, a right-wing populist party)
Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos (Greece – Communist Party of Greece)
Kostas Papadakis (Greece – Communist Party of Greece)
Miroslav Radačovský (Slovakia – Slovak PATRIOT, which is a right-wing party)
Milan Uhrík (Slovakia – Hnutie Republika or Republic – a far-right party)
Martin Sonneborn (Germany – Die Partei or The Party, which is a satirical party)
Tatjana Ždanoka (Latvia – Latvijas Krievu savienība or the Latvian Russian Union, which is backed by ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking minorities)
Tesla CEO says he is postponing restart of the subscription service by two weeks to make sure it is “rock solid”.
Elon Musk has delayed the relaunch of his paid subscription service for Twitter after the billionaire’s overhaul of the platform’s verification policies led to an explosion in impostor accounts.
The Tesla CEO, who has radically shaken up Twitter since buying the platform for $44bn last month, said he would postpone the launch by two weeks to make sure it is “rock solid”.
“Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.
Twitter last week suspended the new subscription service and applied grey “official” badges to profiles of public figures and major companies in an effort to clear up confusion and misinformation on the platform.
Musk tweeted on Tuesday that under the relaunched subscription service, “changing your verified name will cause loss of checkmark until name is confirmed by Twitter to meet Terms of Service”.
Twitter’s original verification system offered a checkmark free of charge to authenticated famous users and accounts considered to be of public interest.
Musk criticised the previous checkmark policy, introduced to prevent accounts from impersonating public figures, as a “lords and peasants system”.
The latest plans for Twitter come after weeks of chaotic upheaval at the social media giant, marked by mass layoffs, high-profile resignations and fleeing advertisers.
Large companies, including General Motors, Audi, General Mills and United Airlines, have pulled or suspended advertising on Twitter amid concerns about the future of the platform under Musk.
